Illinois Confederation

You may be looking for Chief Illiniwek, a symbol of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

For the passenger train called the Illini, see Illini (Amtrak).

The Illiniwek (also known as the Illini, Illinois, Illinois Confederacy, etc) were a group of sixNative American tribes in the upper Mississippi River valley of North America. The most populous tribes were the Kaskaskia, the Cahokia, the Peoria, the Tamaroa, Moingwena and the Michigamea.

When French explorers first journeyed to the region from Canada in the early 17th century, they found the area inhabited by a vigorous, populous Algonquian nation who called themselves Illiniwek, which means "men." This the French rendered as Illinois. What we know today about the Illiniwek comes to us mainly from the Jesuit Relations. The Jesuit Relations were the reports which these missionaries who lived among the various native nations sent back to their superiors in France.

In the seventeenth century, the Illiniwek suffered due to a combination of European diseases and the expansion of the Iroquoisinto the eastern Great Lakes region. The Iroquois had hunted out their traditional lands and sought more productive hunting and trapping areas. They needed these furs to purchase European trade goods, upon which they had grown dependant.

When the Ottawa war chief Pontiac was murdered in Caholia by an Illiniwek warrior, terrible retirbution followed. Several northern tribes flooded into Illiniwek lands. The Potawatomi, Miami, Kickapoo, Sauk, and Fox drove out the Illinois and occupied their erstwhile lands. They all but destroyed the Illiniwek Confederacy. They drove the remnant into what is today southern Illinois. By the early nineteenth century, this area was somewhat settled by United States pioneers from the eastern United States.

As a consequence of Indian Removal, the descendents of the Illiniwek are now found in Peoria County, Oklahoma as the Confederated Peoria Tribe.

External links

• Illinois Confederacy
• The Illinois
• [http://www.usgennet.org/usa/mo/county/stlouis/native/1stcontact.htm Tribes of the Illinois/Missouri Region at First
• The Illini: Lords of the Mississippi Valley

Contact (1673)]

• The Tribes of The Illinois Confederacy
• Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma